He said: “It’s to give them empowerment, it’s not a crutch for them to lean on permanently.”

The first phase of the national troubled families programme was launched in April 2012 with the ambition of ‘turning around’ the lives of 120,000 families in the aftermath of the riots in 2011.

Hartlepool was mandated to identify and ‘turn around’ 290 families by March 2015.

This lead to the launch of the second phase in 2014 which is still ongoing, which has greater flexibility and discretion in identifying families to work with and aims to provide ‘significant and sustained progress’ for them.

Hartlepool receives an annual service transformation grant of approximately £150,000 to assist in this process.

The government grants £1,000 of funding for each family attached to the scheme, with a further £800 available depending on their success.

Going forward the plan aims to ensure the partnership uses data to get the best results and develops plans to address concerns regarding school attendance, anti-social behaviour and domestic violence.